Black teenager who was stopped-and-searched 50 times between 14 and 17 will sue London cops for harassment

A 17 year old black teenager in London is tired of being busted for walking while black. He says he's been stopped-and-searched without cause fifty times since he was 14, and that on a number of occasions this has included bullshit charges (later dropped), wild accusations, strip searches, and detention in police cells. None of these stops has led to a conviction -- his most recent one almost did. PC John Lovegrove arrested the teenager during a stop-and-search, alleging that he assaulted the cop during a stop-and-search. The case went to court, but then collapsed when the footage showed that the teenager "[lay] there like a dead fish" during the search, and did not roll over or spit, as was alleged by the constable.

The Met won't comment on the case. The teenager will sue the London Metropolitan Police for harassment.

The youth had been stopped by police in Sidcup, south London, on 11 February this year, after reports on the police radio that a named white suspect had threatened his father with a knife and had then run off. The police description was later amended to black or mixed race male.
Although no weapon or drugs were found on the youth, he remained handcuffed while the police forced him to the ground. He was then strip-searched at the police station. He had cigarette papers in his pocket and torn up cardboard that PC Lovegrove said could be used as a filter when smoking cannabis. No drugs were found during the strip search.
The youth said: "I can't think of any other reason why the police keep doing this to me apart from racism. I've been stopped and searched so many times I've lost count, I think it's about 50 times."
The Met police is 11 times more likely to stop and search black people than white ones, according to Equalities and Human Rights Commission research published earlier this year. It has accused the Met of racial profiling.

Black teenager 'stopped 50 times' plans to sue Met police for harassment

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: authoritarianism • london • police • race • uk

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sickkid1972

Life imitating art, imitating life… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y
edgore

To be fair, darker colored people *are* more likely to be darker colored.
MikeKStar

I don’t understand why these teenagers won’t just stop being black. Sounds like a simple solution to me.
- xzzy
  
  Really, just send them to antarctica in the summer months. Missing out on all that sun should pale them right up like it does to me!
- http://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/ mr_subjunctive
  
  Well, you know. Peer pressure. Nobody wants to be the first in their group to stop being black.
- http://www.facebook.com/egnyquist Erik G. Nyquist
  
  As for me: I blame the parents.
  - copperwatt
    
    Studies show that by far the largest risk factor for blackness is the having of black parents. *The more you know….*
Ramone

“PC John Lovegrove arrested the teenager…”

PC = Police Constable, yes?
- edgore
  
  Police Callbox. He’s a bigger jerk on the inside.
- http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC
  
  To be non-snarky, yes. It’s what we call the lowest rank of police officers here in the UK.
  - Wreckrob8
    
    Shome mishtake shurely, Ed? In Dixon of Dock Green, maybe.
  - toyg
    
    And rank they do, all right…
http://johnstonsigns.blogspot.com/ dejoh

Maybe if he wore a clown outfit, they would leave him alone
hakuin

no, then they would think he was a cop
jeligula

I hope he gets enough to move out of London.
Jake0748

Well… so happy to hear that racist, ignorant, stupid, dick-head cops aren’t limited to here in the good old USA.
- http://www.facebook.com/egnyquist Erik G. Nyquist
  
  In the USA he wouldn’t have been searched so many times. He would probably have been shot for resisting arrest. Or “Committed Suicide” while handcuffed in the back of a police car.
  - Jake0748
    
    Ok, fine, Erik. Thanks for making me even more depressed about the state of our society.
    You do understand that some of us over here care about this stuff, right?
    - millie fink
      
      What makes you think Erik doesn’t?
  - toyg
    
    Not just there. Quite a few cases in Italy of recent… one kid died of “natural causes” after a policeman basically sat on his chest.
Mitch_M

Rolling papers? I’ve seen five black and zero white drivers pulled over over a span of 30 minutes in different areas of Madison and Fitchburg but they tend to ignore marijuana unless someone is being disruptive in some other way.
benher

Oh what, so now London cops aren’t allowed to have fetishes?
SomeGuyNamedMark

“Lovegrove claimed the youth, who was handcuffed behind his back at the time and forced to the ground by police, rolled over and, in doing so, caused grazing and bruising to the officer’s knuckles.”

They also charged him with scuffing their shoes and hurting their feelings. I hope the officer filed a disability claim on those grazed knuckles.
http://nelc.livejournal.com/ NelC

Though dated in terminology, this sketch from the late seventies is still, sadly, up to date in most other ways:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO8EpfyCG2Y

Edit: Oops, already been posted. Sorry!
- ldobe
  
  This quote has got to be 90% of traffic stops in the midwest:
  ” He’s being held in the station for….Possesion of curly black hair and thick lips”
http://avarana.blogspot.com MarlboroTestMonkey7

I foresee a promising career on tv and film as the “dark skinned, urban, dangerous looking male”. Time to cash on stereotypes!
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Jerry-Glover/100000465733750 Jerry Glover
  
  Skip the “dark-skinned” bit and just consider the Met. ” urban, dangerous looking male”. Time to cash on stereotypes!
  
  Another TV police series perhaps?
Wreckrob8

The real crime here is being black in Sidcup. I was brought up in Sidcup. It is the sort of place where people worry about the effect of black immigration on house prices. At least it was. I doubt if it has changed that much. Now it scares me. Too many white people.
- http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood
  
  I can’t tell whether YouTube is going to hit the #t=00m35s mark correctly–that is, without an advertisement–for everyone or not, and if I can’t guarantee the timing of the Relevant Funny Bit, I’m not going to post it.
  
  That was my intention, anyway. But Disqus isn’t letting me delete the video preview. A vast, steaming pile of failure, that’s what I’ve got here. A pointless waste of time. Wretched waves of self-loathing. Damn it all to hell forever.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    If you link to a video with a time marker, Disqus will embed the video without the time marker. And you can’t link to a video without Disqus auto-embedding it. I’ve complained; they don’t give a shit. The link will still take you to the correct time.
http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/ J. Brad Hicks

Don’t you understand that this can’t possibly be about race, because the election of Barack Obama proved that … wait, no, I got nothing.
- Hakan Koseoglu
  
  Didn’t know the Met answered to US and specifically its President. Hang on, that explains a thing or two about what’s going on around Knightsbridge these days.
http://www.edmstudio.com futnuh

As a curious white male, I would be really interested in a day-long chaperoned “Black Like Me” experience. Not with any expectation of fun, mind you, rather as a way to experience first-hand the daily reality of non-whites in western society.
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  No one could afford the liability insurance.
- millie fink
  
  Oh I’m sure all sorts of black people would be more than happy to accommodate your “curiosity.”
  
  (i.e., say what?)
http://voidstar.com/ jbond

A black teenager’s view of the police

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdQYX93_13U
- millie fink
  
  wrong video? can i have my 1:30 back?
vinculture

I should perhaps point out that the possession of rolling papers and ‘torn up cardboard’ proves nothing. I used both to roll my own tobacco – not cannabis – cigarettes when I smoked. Most RYO (roll-your-own) tobacco smokers use the same method.
- Wreckrob8
  
  The size or weight of the rolling papers is not specified. There are degrees of suspicion in identifying drug paraphernalia. Skin colour is not one of them.
  - vinculture
    
    You could say that a cigarette lighter is ‘drug paraphernalia’ but it doesn’t make it so. His real offence was not being white in the opinion of this PC it would seem.
    - Wreckrob8
      
      It can be perfectly acceptable circumstantial but not direct evidence without the existence of a lit spliff. The point is Mr Fucking Plod maliciously conflates or confuses circumstantial and direct evidence and is ignorant of probability.
- ldobe
  
  I can’t stand the cardboard, so I taught myself the conical roll. Which ends up making the cigarette look like a joint anyway. And nobody’s bothered me about taking out what looks like a joint behind my ear, and lighting up wherever I think it’s legal to smoke tobacco (I live in Washington State, no public smoking, and also no smoking closer than 25 Feet to any publicly accessible doorway.)
  
  Of course, it could be that I’m white, and in Western Washington people don’t really seem to mind pot smoking. Recreational use decriminalization is going on the ballot in November.
mobobo

“The case went to court, but then collapsed when the footage showed that the teenager “[lay] there like a dead fish” during the search, and did not roll over or spit, as was alleged by the constable.”

WTF!
How does crap like this even get before a judge? And when it does why doesn’t the judge level punitive charges against all who allow it to waste court time – the Officer leveling the charge, his superiors for allowing it to go through, and his counsel for not telling them all to stop acting like malevolent racist retards.

Good on the bloke for taking the Met to court in return – I hope he gets a judge whose head isn’t firmly planted in their own arse.
- Wreckrob8
  
  This is the Tory heartland of Britain, Prime Ministerial safe seat territory. Ted Heath was my MP as a kid. I do not know if racism is newsworthy there, which might explain a lot.
- dainel
  
  So what happens to the policeman who lied and gave false evidence. This was proven with the CCTV recording. Does he get the sack and go to jail?
  - llazy8
    
    Yeah. Just the allegations themselves should sound alarms in the court system:
    
    “. . . caused grazing and bruising to the officer’s knuckles.”
http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

Sometimes, I wish that the same people who can quote Monty Python’s Flying Circus chapter-and-verse, could AT THE VERY LEAST watch the Young Ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z55mLS-qWnc
- mrjawright
  
  I don’t think it made it to PBS (where nearly everyone was introduced to British TV in the US in the days before cable). I’ve seen a few episodes. Now that you’ve reminded me, I may have to check Hulu and Netflix for it.
Stone_Monkey

Things aren’t as bad as they were in the 80s, I guess. At least young black men aren’t regularly being beaten to death in cells and having it passed off at the inquest as “Heart Attack”. That made my teenage years scarier than they should have been, I’ll tell you.
- http://lubke.net Flashman
  
  Is this Johnny Dawes?
  - Stone_Monkey
    
    Who?
    
    Ah, I see. I’m younger… And less white… And haven’t climbed all that many rocks…
http://arib.livejournal.com Ari B.

Wow, good luck to him.